Learning Aloud

I thought I should give some thought to authoring a comment on the technology decade now ending. For me, the 2010’s was the decade of Web 2.0 decline. I have always attributed the phrase Web 2.0 to Tim O’Reilly whom I think it appropriate to say popularized the phrase, but the Wikipedia source of all knowledge claims the phrase was first used by Darci DiNucci. O’Reilly noted that the Internet in the early 2000’s had become a platform allowing applications to be available on the Internet rather than being limited to the desktop. In addition because of their online presence, these applications offered a social opportunity. The notion of participation via the Internet was a hopeful way to look at politics, global awareness, and learning.

My wife and I had an educational technology textbook at the time and the generative potential of this shared social space and the opportunities to create in several formats fit very well with a core concept in our writing. Several alternatives to the phrase Web 2.0 captured our thinking more effectively for educators. The same collection of features labeled Web 2.0 was sometimes called the Read/Write web or the participatory web. We adapted concepts such as Writing to Learn and Teaching to Learn to the generative and social opportunities Web 2.0 made available.

We tried to stay true to the participatory opportunity of Web 2.0. I had the opportunity to run personal servers when I was still working at a University and had web pages as soon as this became possible. My original blog launched in 2002 using early Blogger software you could run on your own equipment. The promise of wikis was also appealing and I developed a wiki focused on the potential of “The Participatory Web” to explore the potential of a textbook offered using this tool. While wikis are by intent designed to encourage participation and shared authorship, my interest was mostly in using this software as an easy way to offer content and I did not allow others to modify what I had written. I did use a shared wiki in my graduate Instructional Design class. The wiki content from my personal server was eventually modified for sharing as linked pages using WordPress as the software for this platform was easier for me to keep current.

I have had a sense that online participation is fading. I recently came across a BuzzFeed article making the same observation and examined possible explanations. The following excerpt offers the core observation from this article.

The internet of the 2010s will be defined by social media’s role in the 2016 election, the rise of extremism, and the fallout from privacy scandals like Cambridge Analytica. But there’s another, more minor theme to the decade: the gradual dismantling and dissolution of an older internet culture.

The BuzzFeed article goes through the decline or closing of multiple services (e.g., MySpace, blogs, Google Reader, Flickr) and offers some general concerns. For example, does the elimination of services users have contributed to for years lead to a skittishness with investment in new platforms. A version of this same problem occurs when services move from one company to another and the new company changes the rules (e.g., Flickr). I have the luxury of renting server space so I am less dependent on what individual companies decide to do, but the downturn of interest in reading online content generated and maintained by individuals determines whether there is an audience for those of us investing in this model of authoring.

I wish I could offer a remedy. I am most concerned that the educational opportunities of writing to learn will become less attractive without experienced educators and an authentic audience for student work. My project for this year’s winter trip is to update my participatory web site to offer more current tutorials and argue that participation is a partial remedy to the dissemination of false information. Too much consumption and not enough contemplation and participation would seem a reasonable way to address what we now face in the decline of Web 2.0.

We depend on education to address so many important issues in society one might think that the importance of those who serve this general societal need would draw the best and the brightest. Data from universities and colleges offer a very different picture. Enrollment in teacher preparation programs nationwide has declined by more than 30% and the decline in some states (e.g., Michigan, Oklahoma, Illinois) is greater than 50%. This trend despite what has been described as a generally better economy and an increasing population requiring more teachers.

Teacher compensation is certainly part of the problem. Teachers make 21% less than those with other BA/BS degrees. This differential can be interpreted as a reflection of many factors, but this differential has decreased greatly in recent years. The difference has increased over the last thirty years. Many news outlets have described the needs for teachers to pay for part of their own classroom resources and have brought attention to the multiple teacher strikes that have occurred this past year. Yes, teachers are striking for more money, but also over issues of the number of students in their classrooms and other student-focused issues such as access to counselors.

The public has common issues when it comes to education. A frequent complaint is that teachers work 9 months a year and I assume that many contrast this with their own year-round employment obligations. Not teaching year-round is a condition that teachers themselves created. Many do look for other employment options during their time out of the classroom, but if you considered what you might do when out of work on a regular basis it should be clear that the options are limited. One in six educators has at least one other job and this is not a function of being unemployed in the summer. During the early years of work, most educators must also spend time and money seeking the graduate work necessary for them to advance on the salary schedule and to meet expectations for professional status in some states.

There are some issues that do irritate me about the behavior of some teachers. I attribute many of these issues to the vagueness of whether being a K12 teachers is a profession or a job. Teachers themselves seem to see this differently and I don’t think this necessarily works to their benefit. How many hours you work and having a balanced life are positions on work I don’t associate with professionals. I agree that more are talking about work/life balance, but to me professionals primarily worry about the quality of their work. You complain about the demands that limit this goal – responsibility for too many people and too many expectations for what is to be accomplished, unnecessary tasks that compete with primary responsibilities, lack of support from those you seek to help, and lack of resources important in achieving the goals of your profession.

I am also troubled by the perspective of outsiders than anyone can teach. Sure, it is great that programs encourage young people to dedicate a few years to education, but at least the area in which I work (classroom application of technology) shows that it takes several years to reach a peak in application. Data on classroom applications that show this growth over the first half-dozen or so years makes some sense. The complexities of the classroom and school setting require some experience and there are priorities that are focused on early with more advanced skills that involve innovation appearing later. As educators gain this experience there is also the reality that they must continue to invest time to make use of new methods and address new problems society expects educators to solve.

Let me start with this. I am personally a big consumer of content in many forms. I read. I watch. I listen. I spend money on content of multiple types I own and I get other content from a couple of different libraries. My intent here is not to discourage use of any of these resources or sources. What I struggle with are arguments that all formats are equally suited to all purposes. I am most interested in educational applications and decisions made by educators when it comes to assigning content. I am also not suggesting that it is not useful to have experiences learning from multiple formats.

Here is the type of message I think can be confusing. This news article is titled “Why we are ditching our kindles in favor of audiobooks“. While this may be true, this is not a claim about learning and perhaps more a comment on convenience. Here is an example of a more direct examination of the issue I am intending to address – Are audiobooks as good for you as reading?” This Time article both mentions the type of article that claims listening is just as good and articles that claim reading is to be preferred for learning. BTW – the article also gets into the screen vs paper reading issue which a different issue.

The Time article mentions a straightforward study by Willingham & Woody, 2010. The research considered the retention resulting from listening to a podcast vs. reading a transcript. I include this reference because the students reading the material learned much more as measured on a followup exam.

Willingham & Woody note that the students knew that listening resulted in less retention. I think those of us who use both formats on a regular basis do as well. We like listening for the convenience. We like listening because it allows us to do other things at the same time (driving, walking on a treadmill). We like listening because it is easier. Yes, we make students listen to lectures. However, we expect them to take notes and would rather they did nothing else at the same time. Is this what you and I do when we listen to an audiobook or a podcast. I doubt it. If I were going to just sit there listening and taking notes, I would prefer to read and highlight because I could be moving much faster.

Willingham notes that reading allows rereading which we do far more often than we realize. He is not describing the type of review that one might duplicate with an audiobook by scrubbing back a page or so and listening again, he is talking about the very efficient use of regressive eye movements we engage in when we read. Even if listeners relisten, what they are doing is not the equivalent of momentary pausing and internal sentence lookbacks that occur as we read.

The golfing expression – drive for show, putt for dough comes to mind. Reading and listening are kind of like that. Listen for fun, read to learn – if the efficiency and effectiveness of learning matters.

Daniel, David B. “They Hear, but Do Not Listen: Retention for Podcasted Material in a Classroom Context.” Teaching of Psychology 37.3 (2010):199. Web.

There have been multiple attempts to offer an alternative to Facebook and I have tried and continue to use several (Diaspora, MeWe). The network effect (people stay where there are other people) makes it very difficult to gain traction. Now, Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder, is going to give it a try. The new service is called wt:social.

wt:social will differ from Facebook (and Twitter) mostly in how it is funded and how it is funded has consequences for how it works. Facebook and Twitter are funded by targeted ads and make use of user data to sell these ads. Wales intends to fund wt:social using the same kind of contribution model he used with Wikipedia.

Because wt:social has been relatively possible, Wales has had to institute a wait list approach for those not wanting to make an immediate contribution. I admit to being one of these individuals. I contribute to several social media sites, but the $100 a year subscription model was too much for me at this point. I would have contributed a lesser amount and I might eventually contribute the $100, but I want to see if the site can attract a substantial amount of activity before it would be worth this amount to me.

wt:social is built on an a previous news effort that never really gained much traction. It does retain some features of the effort and allows participants to create and “subwikis” that can be followed as an addition to following the posts from specific friends. I created a wiki – K12 Edtech – to see how this might work. Individuals interested in this topic who join wt:social are encouraged to add this “group” and to contribute. I intend to see the wiki with links top content I have written elsewhere and maybe some original content so there is initially something there to see. If nothing develops in a month or so, I will probably just delete the topic. Give it a look if interested.

If you are interested in wt:social and want to spend some time to see how it develops, my wait time was about a week.

If you are unhappy with Facebook or Twitter this may offer an alternative and a big name in the tech community may be able to pull off creating an option. How satisfied you are will depend on whether the new offering can attract users and what you found objectionable with other existing services. The elimination of the business model based on harvesting personal information to drive ads could be your objection. If you want to leave Facebook because of what you read there, it is hard to predict if things will improve with a different service. wt:social does allow control over acquaintances and wiki sources so your feed may end up more to your liking.

I have been a supporter of the Brave browser and ecosystem since I first tried it months ago. Simply put, the Brave ecosystem is intended to protect user privacy and still allow a way for content creators and online service providers to generate revenue to support their effort and infrastructures. The Brave browser allows users to take several different actions:

• Block ads, cookies, and scripts
• View Brave screened and delivered ads and be compensated for being open to this content
• Compensate content creators and service providers

Which of these capabilities is implemented is under user control. I do think it appropriate that if users block ads they should consider the reality that they are also accepting the work of others without compensation or at a minimum rejecting the assumption producers made when engaging in the creative process. So, I promote Brave as way to receive compensation AND compensate creators without abandoning privacy.

When I started with Brave, there was no opportunity for users of the browser to receive compensation by viewing selected ads. I put in $50 as a way to explore the full system as it developed. The availability of revenue for viewing Brave controlled ads was not available at that time. I did take advantage of the compensation opportunity when it became available, but must say that even at the amount of time I spent online I was still paying most of my commitment out of pocket. Not a big deal, but I do understand how the very frugal might see this as a problem.

One of the issues I had with Brave was that I could use Brave on all of the various devices I use, but the revenue generating opportunity was only available on my computers (not my phone or tablets). For many users, the phone and tablet may be their only devices or represent the vast proportion of the time they spend online. I think this was even true for me.

Today, Brave has announced that it now makes available the opportunity of iOS users to receive compensation for their attention. The multiple options I describe above are easy to set up.

I describe my experiences with Brave in multiple posts you can locate by using the search box on this site.

I think Brave will influence what happens online. My concern is that other players who could have easily implemented similar opportunities will now respond with similar programs limiting the commitment of users to Brave. This is how business seems to go, but it does seem unfair that innovation is so often mimicked leaving little for those who forced advancement.